Gratitude Is a Mindset Grateful Day One Too often, we become overly comfortable with those closest to us. Our husbands, wives, children, and parents are usually with us every day of our lives. You would think that we would hold them in the highest place within our hearts and minds, and, when questioned, we would say no less. However, I know that in my own life at least, that sentiment is slightly less than true. Itʼs not that I donʼt want to hold them in a place of importance to me, a place of honor. Itʼs that we have become familiar. Thereʼs an old saying, Familiarity breeds contempt. If we break that down a bit, what itʼs saying is that the things and people we see most often slowly become less special to us over time if left unchecked. The shine wears off. The paint chips away. Our world is prone to decay in all areas of life. So what do we do? How do we rekindle the internal concept of honor for those closest to us? Honor is the idea that something is worthy of being thought of highly, that it is important and of value to you. And when people honor something, they look for the best things about it and will often tell others how thankful they are for either the trait or the object of their honor. They show gratitude to other people and to the focus of their honor. So the simple answer is you show honor by showing gratitude. What does is mean to have gratitude? Simply put, gratitude is a state of thankfulness resulting from your hopes being met or exceeded. Ok, so maybe thatʼs not simply put. Gratitude isnʼt always the simple concept as we throw around in church and on the fourth Thursday of November here in America. We can break that down into three pieces that we will discuss over the next few days. 1. Gratitude is a state of mind. 2. Gratitude requires thankfulness. 3. Gratitude must be expressed in some way. First, gratitude is a state of mind. Itʼs something you decide to be. It doesnʼt come naturally at first, and is one of those things we need to renew our minds toward. We have to consciously and continually remind ourselves to be thankful for the familiar things in our lives. Itʼs hard! There are many times in our lives where a family member may have done to us or said something about us that causes hurt, something that quenches our hopes in the moment. They donʼt even have to be earth-shatteringly important hopes. Sometimes a child breaks a rule, a spouse forgets something, or a parent makes an undebatable decision we disagree with. All of these things can happen every day, maybe even more than once a day. It can be as big as deep emotional hurts, or as small as someone eating the leftovers youʼve been saving for two days. These things will happen if you spend life with anyone. Thereʼs no avoiding it. Yet, in those moments, when the challenge to be thankful for someone is at its hardest, the decision to have a state of mind built founded on gratitude is more important than ever. There is a great concept that is worth bringing up whenever relationships and interactions with family are discussed. You have to choose your battles. That means we have to weigh the value of this argument we are starting against the value we place on the good things in our live -peace, relationship, harmony, love. We need to constantly circle back in our thoughts (sometimes after the fact no oneʼs perfect) to this idea, Was this thing we wanted in the moment really and truly worth losing peace and harmony in our relationship?
Gratitude Is a Mindset Grateful Day One The answer is usually a resounding NO. The gratitude we hold for the gifts God in each other needs to eclipse our anger in the moment so we can return to the right mindset. There is no amount of leftover eating, laundry being undone, projects unfinished, messages forgotten, or anything else that is worth more than maintaining and returning to a mindset of gratitude for one other. Itʼs hard to be thankful in those moments, but it is so necessary. You have to have a bigger picture of the wonderful things about this person you will spend the rest of your life with in one way or another, than the temporary picture in front of you when they miss it. And don t forget, you miss it too, sometimes. The answer will usually be found in the thing that follows the phrase Oh man, I love Be honest. Are you speaking of people in your family in a thankless and dishonorable way? If you are reading this together as a family, donʼt shame each other for an answer. Every good physician knows that identifying the issue is the most critical first step to healing. For every member of your immediate family, choose two of the items from Philippians 4:8 that you can apply to them and write a positive sentence or two about it. E.g. I have always found my wifeʼs ability to improve on her cooking skills to be very admirable. A great scripture for properly shaping this mindset is Philippians 4:8, And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about these things that are excellent and worthy of praise. Thatʼs a very clear list of things for us to think about. Youʼll notice that the shortcomings of our family didnʼt make the list. Itʼs hard to be thankful for someone when we have a mindset devoted to dwelling on their failures. Itʼs significantly easier when we dwell on the things about someone from that list - the list of good things. Donʼt let familiarity glaze over the good things about someone. Life Application What things are you speaking and thinking the best of in your life? What are you honoring by expressing gratitude? Take a minute and really think about it. What receives the most praise from you? Your favorite sports team, TV show, your phone, or chicken wings? What do you speak the best of?
Gratitude Requires Thankfulness Grateful Day Two On the surface, gratitude, gratefulness, and thankfulness may appear to be the same concept. They are used fairly interchangeable in our modern conversation, but they carry a deeper meaning. In 1 Samuel 16:7, God says,...the Lord doesnʼt see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearances, but the Lord looks at the heart. So, we are going to dig in and separate those terms. To start, gratitude is a mindset and requires the idea of thankfulness. Gratefulness is an internal appreciation for a benefit you have received. Let s expand on this. In a transaction between people, there is usually a giver and a recipient. If someone gives a cheerful Hi! on a Sunday morning to you, you are the recipient, and they are the giver. When you are grateful for an action, you generally think about the impact it has had on you. There is nothing wrong with that, necessarily! In order for us to be grateful, there has to be a real and sincere response to something we have been given. You can also be grateful when bad things are withheld from you. However, in both of those cases, as with all gratefulness, the focus is on you, the recipient, and is viewed from your perspective. Again, nothing wrong with that. When you are grateful for something someone has done, you are appreciating the positive effect they have had on you. Y ou don t necessarily need to even know the giver. For instance, you can be grateful for the gift of a secret admirer or secret Santa, if the weather was nice, or if it s Friday. So, gratefulness says, Wow, that was really nice for me! Thankfulness is a bit different than that. Let s return to the example of being greeted on a Sunday morning. When we view it through the lens of gratefulness, we appreciate that we were greeted. When we look at the same event with thankfulness, we appreciate that the other person sacrificed a moment of their life to greet us. Thankfulness is appreciation for the giver, not the act. You can be thankful that Mr. Jones brought in bagels this morning, or that your parents bought you the gift you asked for, or that your baby recognized when you came home and ran up to you saying, Mama/ Dada! Thankfulness is about the giver. Thankfulness says Wow, you did that really nice thing for me! In order to be truly thankful, we have to look at the other person. For instance, let s say a relative bought you an album you already have. Gratefulness has no part to play here. You already have the album. You have gained nothing. Thankfulness, on the other hand, looks at the fact that this person cared enough about you to know what kind of music you like, spent some of their money to purchase it, and spent some of their time to complete said transaction and deliver their gift to you. They may have even wrapped it up in a pretty little box. Just think of all that person did! It doesn t matter that you already had the album. They were thinking of you. Now that we have a better understanding of the concepts of gratefulness and thankfulness, we can see how they relate to gratitude. Number one, gratefulness and thankfulness can operate independently of one another and are in no way tied to each other. You can be grateful and not thankful. You can be thankful and not grateful. You can be both, or you can be neither. Number two, gratefulness tends to be more instinctual, while thankfulness is more intentional. We can be grateful for events that are tied to no one, but to be thankful, we must direct it at someone.
Gratitude Requires Thankfulness Grateful Day Two It requires a deeper level of thought than gratefulness. Number three, thankfulness sometimes requires effort. You may have to search for a reason to be thankful. Thatʼs why its tied to gratitude. We discussed how gratitude is a mindset yesterday. When we decide to live a life filled with gratitude, it requires that we look for something to be thankful for about the other people in our lives. It requires that we look beyond ourselves and see that maybe the people in our lives arenʼt perfect, but theyʼre trying. A great saying goes like this, We always judge everyone else by their actions, but judge ourselves by our intentions. The mindset of gratitude seeks to look past what that other person did, and see through to their heart, their intention. Maybe they did eat your leftovers, but it wasnʼt malicious. Maybe they forgot something important, but they didnʼt mean to. Itʼs not exactly what you wanted, but they tried. Thankfulness isnʼt about the results, itʼs about the other personʼs intentions. To truly have a mindset of gratitude, you have to search out the best in people, even when, and maybe especially when, itʼs not easy. How did you respond? Were you just grateful? Did it make you feel good to get it? Or were you thankful? Did you appreciate the person who gave it to you? Think about the times youʼve given someone else something. How did they respond? Were they grateful, thankful, both, or neither? How did you as the giver feel in response to that? Thankfulness requires effort, but any repeated effort will become easier with time. Commit today to start finding a sincere reason to be thankful for the people in your family. Donʼt treat it lightly. True thankfulness has a profound and transformative effect on both the thankful person and the subject of their thankfulness. As hard as it may be, remember God put you together. If youʼre having a hard time coming up with something, pray and ask God to highlight something in that person to be thankful for. He loves that! Our verse today, 1 Samuel 16:7, says,... The Lord doesnʼt see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart. Gratefulness looks at the outward appearance. Thankfulness looks at the heart. Life Application Think about the last time you were given something, not necessarily a gift, maybe just a greeting or a kind word.
Gratitude Must Be Expressed Grateful Day Three One of the most common phrases families throw around when they have a discussion is, Iʼm not a mind reader! The idea this represents is that no person, no matter how gifted, can know what goes on in the mind of another person with any real degree of accuracy. Sure, you can learn a lot of tricks, and you can watch the same person for a long time so that you can anticipate what they would normally do, but thatʼs not really mind reading. No matter what anyone says, it canʼt really be done. Proverbs 14:10 says, Each heart knows its own bitterness, and no one else can fully share its joy. That may sound depressing and isolating, but itʼs not the final statement on the matter. Romans 12:15 gives us instruction for today. Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep. As a family, both in your home and your larger church family, we are asked by God to share things together with each other. How can anyone share our joy if it is not known? How can we share our thankfulness if we never express it? Simply put, we canʼt. The mindset of gratitude requires the expression of thankfulness. We have to say thank you! I know that sounds overly-simplistic, but itʼs not. In our busy world, we go on our way with a million different voices all shouting for our attention, and we often forget to express our gratitude beyond the instinctual thanks that our society told us we were supposed to say. Everyone knows when someone is just going through the motions of a polite thank you compared to a sincere expression of gratitude. Thatʼs why we focused on the mindset of gratitude in day one, and the difference between gratefulness and thankfulness on day two. The expression of thanksgiving must be sincere. You canʼt fake it. It can be as simple as a real and heartfelt thank you when you write a note expressing much how you appreciate the other person. You can give a gift in return to one being given to you.whatever your personal style, it is doesnʼt matter as much as the sincerity behind it. Everyone expresses themselves in different ways. The important thing is that a sincere expression of your thankfulness is received by the other person. That means you have to first be thankful, and then you must express it to that person. Thatʼs it. Thatʼs gratitude. At the end of our Christian lives here on earth, we are going to die or be taken home, and we will stand before Jesus and He will ask us what we did with the time he gave us. He will ask us how we responded when we were wronged and when we were done right. He will ask us if we had gratitude for the gifts he g ave us in our family. Our answer isnʼt going to be about the cold shoulders, social media digs, and silent treatments we received. Our answer is going to be about how we responded with the word of God. These are the instructions He left for us to live by and to shape our conduct. Ephesians 4:31-32 takes all the guesswork out of it. Get rid of all bitterness, rage, anger, harsh words, and slander, as well as all types of evil behavior. Instead, be kind to each other, tender hearted, forgiving one another, just asgod through Christ his forgiven you. You may have been hurt by other people, and forgiveness may be hard, but your Jesus is far bigger than any of that could ever be. Remember, itʼs not about what the other people did. You canʼt control that. Itʼs about how you respond. Did you do your best to respond according to the instructions weʼve been given? It can seem insurmountable at times, but you re not doing it all on your own.
Gratitude Must Be Expressed Grateful Day Three Philippians 4:12-13 says... I have learned the secret of living in every situation... For I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength. Gratitude isnʼt a natural inclination. It takes work. Sometimes, it takes supernatural help. Every time, Jesus is ready, willing, and able to help you. So letʼs go back over the last three days and examine what we have learned. First, we are going to set our minds on things that are true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable, and excellent, and worthy of praise. We are going to look for those things in our lives. Next, we are going to apply that to the people in our families. We are going to look for those good things when they fall short, and we are going to look to be thankful for their efforts in their relationships with us, no matter how small. The Holy Spirit helps us when we are weak. Take a minute either together as a family, or by yourself and pray this prayer: Father, Your word says that the Holy Spirit will guide me into all truth. I pray now that you would remind me to have a mindset of gratitude. Help me to see the things that are good, the things you want me to set my mind on. Help me to love and honor the family youʼve given me. Help me to be thankful. Highlight the things in others you want me to see, and remind me to focus on the good in others. Help me to remember the pathway of gratitude and to express my thanks in a sincere way. In Jesus name, I pray. Amen! Itʼs not about the level of their success or even their effort, itʼs about you focusing on the good things, the right things in them. Next, when we catch ahold of something, when we find something admirable or lovely, at any time and in any circumstance, we are going to express our thankfulness for that good thing. That is how we choose gratitude! Life Application As a special challenge for today, when you want to thank someone, learn about that person and see how they like to be thanked. Notes, or a spoken thank you, or a simple little gift Spending time with them doing something they love Take care of something for them like a chore or a request Great big bear hugs Whatever it may be, find out and choose to thank them in their favorite way.